Breaking: House votes tomorrow [ July 25, 2014 !] on U.S. military involvement in Iraq. Mak/e a call today![

In less than 24 hours, the House will vote on a binding resolution that will require President Obama to seek congressional authorization before escalating American military involvement in Iraq. We need the House to send President Obama a clear message that he cannot unilaterally put the American military back in the middle of Iraq’s sectarian civil war. Call your member of Congress today!

In less than 24 hours, the House will vote on a binding resolution that would require President Obama to seek congressional authorization before escalating American military involvement in Iraq.

President Obama -- who came into office pledging to end George W. Bush’s tragic, unwise and deeply unjust military adventurism in Iraq – has refused to rule out airstrikes in response to the most recent crisis in Iraq, and has suggested that such airstrikes would not require congressional approval. Worryingly, the president has also sent in hundred of special forces troops, and the Pentagon will not rule out these troops being used to target airstrikes.

The news out of Iraq is heart-wrenching and deeply troubling. But one lesson that ought to be seared into our collective memory from the tragic moral failure that was our 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq is the recognition that the American military cannot stop Iraq’s sectarian civil war.

The recent strife has only made it clearer than ever that the American military cannot bring an end to the violence because the violence is caused by an underlying political crisis that must be resolved by the Iraqis themselves.

While airstrikes won’t stop the bloody civil war, they will inevitably lead to civilian casualties and create more enemies abroad. And once we start dropping bombs, it is not hard to see how we could be provoked to escalate further.

Our experience in Vietnam provides an object lesson in how a supposedly limited military engagement can spiral out of control and mire us in a catastrophic war.

While the language of H. Con. Res. 105 does not unambiguously require the president to remove the “military advisors” he has already sent to Iraq (a result of compromises made with House leaders to get a vote on the resolution), passage of the resolution will put a strong congressional check on any attempt by the president to act unilaterally, including by initiating any offensive military operations in Iraq or otherwise escalating our military involvement.

Call Rep. Noem today. Tell her to support the McGovern-Jones-Lee resolution on American military involvement in Iraq. Click the link below for the number to call and a sample script: